CHAPTER TWO
“FAITHLESS ASSAULTS OR FAITHFUL ASPIRATIONS?”
An assault is defined as a violent attack with the intent of doing ultimate harm or serious damage, and certainly the opposition against Christ Jesus was intended to end His “assertions”, but three days after His crucifixion there was “The Resurrection”, eternally cementing the “Faithful Aspirations” of reconciliation, restoration, re-birth, and eternal recovery!
In the midst of hyperbolic exaggerations relating to “Redemptive Faith”, there are the true “soldiers of the Cross” who stand firm and faithful in the midst of humanity’s assaults against “Holy Truth”! In fact, across America today, whether in institutionalized universities or in the streets of illegal intruders or in the hearts and minds of truly ‘faithless’ people, you find a strong, vocal, demonic opposition to Eternal Truth.
Certainly you see and sense those clouds of terror, clouds of triviality, clouds of fleshly treason against the One True Living God, with God’s calling to the servants of “Faithful Aspirations” to stand firm, faithful, and fully clothed in His garments of true salvation, healing, and deliverance!
It’s the day and time and opportunity of remaining faithful in the very center of ‘faithless opposition’, living in submission and obedience to the King of kings and Lord of lords, or choosing, much like a majority of religious pretenders today, to live as consumers or confessors of religious fabrications, rather than converted and re-born in the “dress” of Eternal Truth in Christ!
Are you familiar with the word ‘pretense’? The Random House College Dictionary of 1975, by Random House,Inc., describes ‘pretense’ as “feigning, make-believe, a false show of something, insincere or false profession”, as one who professes but never possesses the reality of “new birth, born-again,” or truly “redeemed by the blood of the Lamb,” or biblical “At-One-Ment” with God Himself!
It was so interesting that my wife, Sue, shared with me, I believe, a “Facebook” post from a Dave Brat, dated February 20, 2016, about Judge Antonin Scalia, former Supreme Court justice who died sometime during the past six months to a year ago (?) – unsure. Brat said of Scalia, “He was a profound thinker with a simple faith, who urged Christians to live fearlessly.” His quote by Judge Scalia, “God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools… and He has not been disappointed…If I have brought any message today, it is this: ‘Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.’” [That’s Justice Antonin Scalia, 1936-2016.].
“Faithless Assaults” are unmerciful, untruthful, unfounded, and sadly reveal how far and to what extent unbelief blinds, corrupts, and poisons many minds and hearts. “Faithless Assaults” are the “bad fruits” of godless lives, insulated through demonic activity, and though godless lives are normal, natural, and necessary, for them, in firmly establishing godless foundations to lives, families, the ‘fellowship of the fallen’, and their futures, they live and promote boisterously, “Who needs God?”, as their declaration of independence!
A “sophisticated world” today? But my question is, ‘has it ever changed’? I hate to be the one to tell you, but it’s been a “sophisticated world” from Adam and Eve to our senseless world today in most nations and peoples with both perilous times and perilous people who firmly believe they don’t need a “savior”! Paul described fallen humanity in his day and ours when in 2 Timothy 3:1-7 he wrote:
“But know this, that in the last days [of historic Judaism] perilous times will come: for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
Just how descriptive do you find those words of ‘yesterday’ for Today? Are there “Faithless Assaults” that are operative today across this modern world? Sadly, some believers see the “gift of salvation” as the “road of deliverance” from any trouble, torment, or even testing, when our Lord clearly said, “In the world you will have tribulation.” And, in Psalm 50:15, wise David wrote of Holy God testifying to His own people, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.”
“Faithless Assaults” are troubles that can lead to torments that become testings as to whether or not we live in biblical trust or simply “try your best to overcome.” I’m sure this is why Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:11-12, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places.”
“Faithless Assaults”? I find Paul’s writings in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 so illuminating as to a believer’s wrestling with “thorns in the flesh.” He said, “And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
But, as in Jesus’ day, so even today, He still says: Matthew 17:17, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” And you’ll remember the context: “And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour.”
Sadly, a modern-day culture thrives on faithlessness, perversity, and satisfaction with the deplorable, the darkened, the demonic, and the devil himself! What was true in Timothy’s day is just as true today when we hear Paul instructing Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:1-2, “Now the Spirit [the Holy Spirit] expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron…”
But it’s not only a modern-day culture in the world that experiences “faithless assaults” – it includes the “church-world”! In Acts 20:25-30 Paul said, “And indeed, now I know that you all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, will see my face no more. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I KNOW THIS, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves.”
And “many savage wolves” are still devouring, deceiving, and destroying human lives, both in the natural realm and the spiritual realm! Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in her writing entitled “The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” [J.E.Beale, Book Department, The Fancy Fair, Bournemouthe], wrote “The Soul’s Travailling. And as I read Browning, I wondered if her heart truly broke over “the mournful breath we name our souls! (Self-spoilt!), ‘traveling vainly’ to the grave”!
Psalm 2 begins with what I personally entitled “The Realness of Rebellion.” Verses 1-3 says, “Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and His Anointed, saying, ‘Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us.” And the next verse 4, speaks of “The Rareness of Laughter,”, “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall hold them in derision;” oh, but then Verses 5-6, God speaks of “His Revelation of Compassion”, “Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, and distress them in His deep displeasure: Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion,” with Verses 7-9 upholding “The Richness of Relationship and The Declaration of Sonship” with His ‘birthed followers’! “I will declare the decree: The Lord has said to Me, ‘You are My Son, today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; you shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.” And Holy God closed out His commissioning in Verses 10-12!
“Now therefore, be wise (“rest in His Light, His Word, His instructions”), O kings; be instructed, you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are those who put their trust in Him.”
Are you aware that Christless, faithless, rebellious lives, though vocal in “faithless assaults,” will one day stand before Holy God at the Judgment Seat of Christ to give an account of their “faithless assaults”? In Romans 14:9-12 Paul wrote: “For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living. But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all attend before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written: “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” So then each of us shall give account of himself to God."
In fact, in Matthew 7:21-23 the Lord Jesus declared, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”
Let your world know it, let your family and friends know it, let your neighbors know it: “Accounting Day before the Lord Jesus for every human being is clearly announced: Judgment Day has come – were you one of faithless assaults or the faithful aspiration of “complete in Christ alone”?”
No more faithless assaults, but now, commitment, surrender, repentance and faith in Christ’s finished work, and our lives now offered as lives of faithful aspiration in what He did for us, in our place, suffering, bleeding, dying, then resurrected to the glory of Holy God, because death could not defeat Him, death could not destroy Him, death could not separate Him from Holy God, which, no doubt, is why Paul asked: “Death where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?”
I hate to be the one to tell you, but B.B. McKinney’s hymn, back in the 1920’s about “The Wayfaring Pilgrim” was intended for “good”, but overlooked the “Lord’s finished work” in all true, born-again, Spirit-filled, divinely-commissioned witnesses!
I’m not “poor” – I’ve been ‘enriched’ with “the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Jesus Christ”! I’m not a “way-faring pilgrim” – I’m a “blood-bought, heavenly birthed son or daughter of the eternal family of God – now, not ‘someday’, now,” not in ‘the sweet by and by’! I’ve been ‘crowned’ and sovereignly ‘commissioned’ NOW – not when I get to heaven! It’s not ‘when I die, I drop the cross of self-denial’ – when I repent, I have already accepted ‘crucified with Christ’, finished with the “old man of sin in me” NOW, not “in the sweet by and by”!
I’ve “read my title clear” and ‘already, in Christ’, I’ve “bid farewell to every fear”, and Now, I rejoice in His “finished work”! I have been “re-born”, I have been “in-dwelt by His Resurrection Life”, I have been ‘indwelt by His Holy Spirit’, I have been anointed in His fruit, His gifting, His promises, and I live in “the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Jesus Christ” NOW!
What did Jude write in Jude 24-25? So interesting, so illuminating, so inspiring! “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, To God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.” But especially Verse 1 where Jude said: “Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, brother of James, To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Christ Jesus.”
And I want you to know that I personally was inspired and enriched by the Holman Study Bible editors who defined in their introduction to the Book of Jude the “Circumstances of Writing”: They said, “Jude called himself ‘a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James” (v.1). The James to whom Jude referred is not the son of Zebedee. He can be ruled out of consideration because he was martyred at an early date.
(Acts 12:1-2). The James to whom Jude refers to is surely the well-known leader of the Jerusalem church (Acts 15:13-21; Gal. 2:9). THIS IS SIGNIFICANT, for this James was the brother of Jesus (Mark 6:3). If Jude was a brother of James, then he was also a brother of Jesus. Rather than call himself Jesus’ brother out-right, Jude chose humbly to designate himself as Christ’s servant.” What a lesson to learn, what an attitude of mind and heart to be inspired by!
Do you think it might be that, by his life choices which often may be seen as “pride”, that Jude humbled himself, desiring to be known as Jesus’ “servant” – not a human, fleshly brother?
This may be why 1 Corinthians 10:31 gets the “high-level mark” of true disciples: “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” AMEN?